Family Pride
by Bad Mum
Summary: Andromeda Tonks reflects on the family she had and the one she has now. For the "Look Right" challenge at the HP Fanfiction Challenges Forum.


_For the "Look Right" challenge at the harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges Forum set by RubberDucky113._

_My prompts were a Christmas card, a wedding photo, a spade and the phrase "You scared me, Mama"._

**Family Pride**

It had been a Christmas wedding. The bridesmaid's dress had been horribly uncomfortable, Andromeda remembered, but it was what Bella had chosen, so she wore it uncomplainingly. And the colour – a deep satiny green - suited Cissy far better than it did her. Bella herself looked stunning of course in ivory silk, and Rodolphus was proud and handsome with her on his arm. Andromeda sighed as she looked at the picture, and put it away at the bottom of the drawer. It would not do for Ted to find it. Not that he would be angry, exactly, but any reminder of her family, of what she had given up for him, tended to make him sullen and unhappy.

There was another picture there now too, a smaller one, slotted into a Christmas card. It had arrived two days ago, four days after the wedding of Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black was announced in the society column of _The Prophet_. Andromeda had not put the card up with the others in their slightly crowded living room. Like Bella's wedding photograph, it would upset Ted. Andromeda had no idea why Narcissa had sent it. They had had no contact since her own wedding seven years earlier. Andromeda had rejected her family by her choice of a Muggleborn husband, and they had rejected her in their turn. Perhaps Narcissa just wanted to show off that she had, in the end, got what – whom – she had wanted since she was thirteen. In the picture, Narcissa was pretty and delicate-looking (Andromeda knew that was appearance only) in white lace. Her new husband looked aloof and slightly bored by the whole thing. The card itself was uninformative. _"To Andromeda, Greetings of the Season, from Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy. _No mention of Ted or of Nymphadora, and as formal as if they were slight acquaintances, rather than family. Andromeda put the card and the photo back with the other picture at the bottom of the drawer.

She shivered. It was cold, and she realised that she had no idea where Nymphadora was. She should check on her. At five, Nymphadora had a knack for trouble that still astounded her strictly brought up mother. A quick check though the house revealed that she was not there, and Andromeda went out of the back door into the small garden with some trepidation. Sure enough, Nymphadora was there, shovelling industriously at the meagre fall of snow on the lawn with a plastic spade. She had no coat and her hands and face were red with cold.

"Nymphadora!" Andromeda called sharply, and the child jumped, before turning to her mother with a scowl.

"You scared me, Mama," she protested, and then her face lit up with a smile that was the mirror of her father's. "Come and see my snowman," she said.

Andromeda made her way carefully over the slippery grass to the lumpy object that her daughter was indicating so proudly. She supposed it was faintly humanoid in appearance, and she made all the right maternal noises about how lovely it was, before insisting Nymphadora come into the house to warm up.

The two of them sat at the kitchen table in companionable silence, Nymphadora with a mug of hot chocolate, and her mother with a cup of tea. Andromeda looked over her daughter's head to her own wedding photographs, displayed on the shelf of the old dresser she and Ted had found in a junk shop a month after their wedding. They had had two weddings, and hence there were two photographs. The first was an unmoving black and white picture of her and Ted with his elderly mother and father. She was wearing a short cream dress, and Ted looked slightly uncomfortable in a borrowed Muggle suit. That had been the Muggle wedding ceremony, which they had agreed on to please Ted's parents. The picture of what Andromeda thought of as their "real" wedding was next to it – a proper moving photo with her and Ted in the middle surrounded by smiling friends. No family of course, but they had not missed them. They had been happy, and as Andromeda topped up her daughter's mug with more hot chocolate and as she heard the Floo hiss into life heralding Ted's return from work, she reflected that they still were. She had all the family she needed right here.


End file.
